World Mental Health Day is taking place on October 10th 2022.
While mental health is an important topic every day, these sorts of ‘World X Day’ are a great way to create awareness around an important topic.
Experiences of mental health are different across the world, and some things that we in the UK would classify as a mental health condition are accepted or embraced in other countries.
Before we start talking about mental health, you need to understand that the phrase ‘mental health’ can refer to both negative and positive health.
When we talk about mental health, often the perspective is that we are talking about the negative sides of mental health, where a mental health condition or a situation is having a negative impact on the person’s life. This is because it is often easier to measure and understand negative mental health than positive mental health.
Positive mental health is often understood through concepts like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which highlights the human need for ‘Self-actualisation’ or achieving one’s goals, being able to act morally, and having creativity. Positive mental health is the concept that your mental health is working well for you – it’s having a positive impact on your life by providing you with things like motivation, no unhealthy anxiety, problem solving, and your mind has all of the tools to keep itself healthy and deal with anything that it can be reasonably equipped to deal with.
The complexity of negative mental health
Negative mental health is incredibly complex, very similar people can have very different experiences of the same mental health condition. A good example of this is often found in experiences of Depression.
- One individual may feel their depression very physically – low mood, low energy, difficulty sleeping, difficulty feeling motivated, and generally feel physically drained.
- Another individual may feel their depression very cognitively – they may struggle with feelings of hopelessness, poor memory, brain fog, and negative thinking patterns.
- Another person may only experience their depression seasonally, such as when there is reduced sunlight over winter.
Any individual could experience any combination of known symptoms for a mental health condition, and possibly symptoms that we haven’t understood are connected to mental health conditions. This makes understanding negative experiences of mental health very difficult, even for those who have experienced a negative mental health condition.
Co-morbidity
Negative mental health in the form of mental health conditions are often comorbid, meaning that they can ‘come with’ or lead to the development of additional poor physical and mental health conditions.
Depression is commonly experienced alongside anxiety, and vice versa, this can make poor mental health even more impactful on the individual. Co-morbidity also applies between physical and mental health conditions, with conditions like anxiety and depression being able to have an effect on our blood pressure, which may worsen existing health conditions that are affected by blood pressure levels.
There is often a lot of cross-over between the development of addictions and experiences of negative health conditions, as what was once employed as a coping mechanism can become problematic, leading a person to become addicted to something.
Poor mental health and support
A cut on your arm which doesn’t become infected will likely not need medical intervention and will gradually get better. An ache or pain may go away, and some conditions just need rest. While this is not always the case, and a small pain can be indicative of a major problem, often with physical injury the human body will just begin to heal itself.
However, the mind is the exception to the rule. Mental health conditions can be biological in nature, and not currently possible to cure, or they can be the product of an environment or negative cognition and beliefs which are cyclical, self-feeding and worsen gradually.
Without intervention from an appropriate professional, mental health conditions can become all encompassing and begin to impact on day-to-day life, quality of life and physical health.
The problem of getting help
The UK is experiencing a mental health crisis. The National Health Service (NHS) and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are not able to meet the required volume of help to keep up with the demand for mental health support.
While counselling isn’t for everyone, it can be a very effective tool for overcoming a wide variety of mental health conditions, and better equipping an individual to deal with environmental or cognitive issues. However, waiting lists on the NHS are between 6 months and 2 years, with little or even no support provided in the interim.
While this isn’t uncommon with some physical conditions (for example, a one-year waiting list to have an initial consultation for a hernia), mental health can have a hugely negative impact on every aspect of an individual’s’ life including their personal relationships, work relationships, work performance, self-actualisation, physical health and a knock-on additional cyclical negative impact on mental health in the form of comorbid conditions.
When support is needed immediately, it often isn’t available.
Without nationally provided free healthcare, individuals who can afford it will look to have private counselling. However, there are geographical restrictions to access a counsellor, limited numbers of available counsellors (as it is a highly skilled profession), and many counsellors are not able to work in hours that are counter to typical working hours of 8am – 6pm.
Additionally, to this, private counselling costs anywhere from £40-£70 per session, and a full course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy will require around one session per week for a maximum of 28 weeks.
This would make the minimum cost for 26 weeks of treatment (half a year) £1040, a figure that many who need mental health the most simply can’t afford.
Furthermore, even if counselling IS affordable and suitable, the individual may be unable to get the time off to attend an appointment, because they are fulfilling their work hours.
The impact on the workplace
Poor mental health can have an immediate negative impact on workplace productivity, and this can often be caused by or compounded by work-related stress.
Those experiencing poor mental health can find it difficult to keep up with the demands of work, and may have poorer workplace relationships with both colleagues and clients/customers.
The real kicker with poor mental health is that it can affect anyone, in any role, in any company at any time. It only takes a few bad days to have a significant and impactful effect on a person, and often the person experiencing poor mental health is not the cause of it, or even a significant contributor to their own experience.
Responsibilities of the workplace
Legal
The workplace has a duty to provide access to work which will not be detrimental to the worker’s health, and this includes their mental health. This duty is placed upon the employer by the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
The workplace has a duty to assess for risks present and to take action to try and control or mitigate those risks. This includes risks to mental health. This duty is placed upon the employer by the Management of Health and Safety Regulations 1999.
The workplace has a duty to treat people fairly, and where mental health conditions are classified as a disability, this treatment is protected under the Equality Act 2010.
Legally, work should not be causing poor mental health, and should not be discriminating against those already experiencing poor mental health.
Morally/financially
Healthy workers are good for a morally just society, and for a productive company. Health (both mental and physical) and productivity go hand in hand. Poor health physically and mentally can have a negative impact on productivity if not properly managed.
Every workplace would prefer to have workers who are in perfect health, as this makes them more likely to be productive, improving returns on investment.
If you’re expecting to make the most of healthy workers, you need to be contributing to the production of a healthy workforce, not just avoiding doing harm.
The system designed to help people to improve or manage their mental health in their own time is not sufficient, so not actively causing harm is no longer enough.
Now more than ever, it is in the interest of the employer to look to improve and address negative experiences of mental health, whether they’re directly the result of the workplace or not.
There are also added benefits to supporting your staff’s mental health from a reputation perspective, because organisations which are positive to work for are much easier to advertise and are more respected by the general public.
How to improve staff’s experience of poor mental health
Develop your organisations awareness
Having an awareness of stress and mental health can improve people’s understanding of their own and other people’s mental health. This can make it easier to have conversations in their personal or professional life relating to mental health and reduce the ‘stigma’ experienced.
Review policies and procedures
Look at your policies and procedures, and identify if there is any room for improvement or flexibility. Is there any way that you can improve your staff’s access to treatment, such as flexible hours which can be worked back, or providing a service that they can access outside of work hours such as an Employee Assistance Programme which includes counselling or mental health support?
Assess the workplace for risks of work-related stress
The risks of work-related stress are considerable and impactful, and without assessing your performance in this area you have no way of knowing whether you are negatively impacting people’s mental health. It is in the interest of the organisation to conduct a stress risk assessment in order to measure performance and begin to enable positive changes within the workplace.
Improve your understanding of work-related stress with our course
Improve wellbeing
Wellbeing and resilience can be an aspect of work that can be improved to offset experiences of personal and work-related stress. By improving wellbeing, you are able to better equip staff to deal with increased pressure, demands and issues that arise. For example, providing staff with encouragement or a means to exercise will naturally improve their resilience against stress, because exercise releases endorphins which trigger a positive feeling in the body.
Improve your understanding of work-related wellbeing with our NEBOSH accredited course
If you’d like to build your health and safety knowledge further, our NEBOSH General Certificate course is a great place to start. It’s designed for anyone looking to develop practical skills and gain a respected qualification in workplace safety. To find out more, get in touch with the ACT team today.
